8thString

PCLinux OS releases new distribution quarterly, at least that is how it looks right now. Last time, I did a screen capture of PCLinuxOS KDE . The latest release came around July 2010 (I believe it was released 08July2010). This time around I will document installing GNOME. This can be helpful for folks who are distro hoping but don't have the time yet to install it. Figure 1. This is the boot screen. It looks geeky and pretty nice. Figure 2. Splash screen. Figure 3. Keyboard layout. Select the physical layout of your keyboard not your current location. Figure 4. GDM login screen. Select "guest", password is "guest". Figure 5. This is the PCLinux OS GNOME desktop. Dark theme with applications you have come to expect from a regular full Linux distribution. Figure 6. Double-click(run) on "Install Licecd". Root password is "root". Figure 7. PCLinuxOS Installation Wizard introduction screen. Figure 8. Hard disk partitioning. Default shoul

This is a screen capture documentation of FreeBSD 8.0 minimal install on VirtualBox. Before we can start the install, we need to have: a) Guest machine configuration for FreeBSD 8.0. b) ISO installer, we will be using bootonly in this case. As usual, create a guest machine configuration, below is my configuration: General Name: fbsd80 OS Type: FreeBSD System Base Memory: 512 MB Processor(s): 1 Boot Order: CD/DVD-ROM, Hard Disk VT-x/AMD-V: Enabled Nested Paging: Enabled Display Video Memory: 9 MB 3D Acceleration: Disabled 2D Video Acceleration: Disabled Remote Display Server: Disabled Storage IDE Controller IDE Primary Master: fbsd80.vdi (Normal, 80.00 GB) IDE Secondary Master (CD/DVD): Empty Floppy Controller Floppy Device 0: Empty Audio Host Driver: Windows DirectSound Controller: ICH AC97 Network Adapter 1: Intel PRO/1000 MT Desktop (Bridged adapter, Microsoft Loopback Adapter) Serial Ports Disabled USB Device Filters: 0 (0 active) Shared Folders None W

I was playing around with Debian Squeeze and observed that rubberband selection and text selection is not working. The Debian Squeeze machine is a VirtualBox guest upgraded from Debian Lenny. I suspected that this maybe caused by Gnome/gtk configuration that was messed during upgrade to Squeeze. Tried to install LXDE and still no dice, same issue observed. I was guessing then that this might be an xorg driver issue (vboxvideo) or mouse (vboxmouse). I started making adjustments to my xorg.conf and waalaah.... issue fixed. This is a snippet of the original configuration: Section "InputDevice" Identifier "Configured Mouse" Driver "vboxmouse" Option "CorePointer" Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice" Option "Protocol" "ImPS/2" Option "Emulate3Buttons" "true" EndSection Changed it

Note*: This is applicable to both CentOS 5.4 and 5.5, maybe applicable to older versions as well. Introduction: One of the installation methods possible in installing CentOS 5.4 is network installation or NetInstall. There are good reasons why one would like to do NetInstall and not install from the full CDs. Installing from CD means you have to download monster files. In CentOS 5.4, NetInstall iso file is only 8.9MB whereas the CDs (6 sets) are ~700MB each. So if you are planning to install just once or if you are going to use VirtualBox (note snapshot functionality, branching and cloning), then netinstall would really make sense. Note that to have good installation experience you have to have a fast connection to internet or a mirror in your intranet. To start with, you need to have VirtualBox installed. I am using W7 Home Premium with 8GB as the host machine. This should not matter much actually if you are familiar with VirtualBox. Then download netinstall iso from http:/

Configuration: OS Type: QNX Base Memory : 512 MB Storage/IDE: 80 GB Processor: 1 Boot Order: CD/DVD-ROM, Hard Disk VT-x/AMD-V: Enabled Nested Paging: Disabled Audio/Host Driver: Windows DirectSound Controller: ICH AC97 Network : Intel PRO/1000 T Server (Bridged adapter, Microsoft Loopback Adapter) Installation: Select boot option: F3 - Install QNX to a new disk partition QNX partition: F1 to continue License: Enter your license EULA : F1 Accept Choose disk: F1 Disk larger than 8.4 GB: F1 Allow the QNX partition to be anywhere on the disk Partition Type: F1 or type 179 Partition size: F1 Use all available space Install default location:  y GNU Public License Utility package: y Configuration information...following file: Remove media: On reboot: phgrafx: - Display : 1 - Driver: svga - Color Mode: 32K (+1 bit alpha) - Resolution: 800x600 - Refresh: 60Hz - Cursor: Hardware Observed that Photon GUI is faster with vesabios driver ~ts

In VirtualBox 3.0.2, I have noticed that most of the times the mouse goes invisible on text areas. For example, if you are in Notepad, once you starting writing some text in the text area the mouse pointer goes into the black hole. The work around is really easy. Go to (Windows XP) Control Panel –> Mouse –> Pointers, then select Windows Black (system scheme). ~ts

Pre-requisite: - internet connection - Virtual Box installed on host machine. This exercise will be using Vista as host. As of this writing, Debian Lenny is still at testing stage. For this exercise we will use RC1, visit http://www.debian.org/releases/testing/ for the netinstall iso. Once download is done, create a new virtual machine using Virtual Box, use the following configuration: 512 MB Memory, 120 GB HD, use Intel PRO/1000T server for the network card. For the VirtualBox networking I am using host network configuration. Once VirtualBox guest configuration is set, start the guest machine and then mount the CD-ROM image. In installer boot menu, select Graphical Install. For "Chose the Language" screen, select English or your language of choice. For the country, select whichever you are currently in. In my case, I will be using Philippines. In "Keymap to use" select "American English" or whichever is much appropriate for your system. After this s

Pre-requisite: - internet connection - Virtual Box installed on host machine. This exercise will be using Vista as host. Download server edition of Ubuntu Intrepid 8.10 from the nearest mirror. Once done, create a new virtual machine using Virtual Box, use the following configuration: 512 MB Memory, 120 GB HD, enable PAE, use Intel PRO/1000T server network. Start virtual machine of the CD-ROM. During the install sequence, select F4. Select the option which mentions about virtual machine installation. Use the default options, reboot and login to the newly install minimal system. Update the system and install aptitude, say: username@hostname:/# apt-get update username@hostname:/# apt-get safe-upgrade username@hostname:/# apt-get install aptitude Then install minimal Gnome, thus say do: username@hostname:/# aptitude install xorg gnome-core gdm gdm-themes My first install of gnome-core didn't work well. Doing username@hostname:/# apt-get update username@hostname:/# apt-get sa

This to document minimal installation of Debian 4.0 (Etch) on VirtualBox host. Download latest Debian Etch, I am using debian-40r3-i386-netinst.iso. During the package installation, deselect all. This should give you a minimal Debian installation. During installation, you say "No" during selecting the mirror. We will update /etc/app/sources.list after the installation anyway. Reboot virtual machine after installation. Add the following lines to your /etc/apt/sources.list, I am using nano to edit sources.list file. Since I am near Hongkong, I selected the mirror sites as shown below, change this as you see fit: hostname:/# nano -w /etc/apt/sources.list Additional entries into /etc/apt/sources.list #more entries from here of course from /etc/apt/sources.list deb http://ftp.hk.debian.org/debian etch main contrib non-free deb-src http://ftp.hk.debian.org/debian etch main contrib non-free Then do: hostname:/# aptitude update hostname:/# aptitude upgrade The above command

When playing around with Virtual Box guests running Linux, the network connection my get lost on Debian Etch when the virtual interface's MAC changes. This is due to the fact that this version of linux is using udev and fortunately udev detects changes to MAC address. So basically, each new network interface with new MAC address gets its new ethx network interface device name. In my case, I got 3 ethx's already so I need to get rid of the unnecessary interfaces. As a root do this: $: su #: cd /etc/udev/rules.d #: mkdir ~/bak #: cp zxx_persistent-net-generator.rules ~/bak #: rm zxx_persistent-net-generator.rules #: /etc/init.d/udev stop #: /etc/init.d/udev start Note that we make a backup of the file just in case we need to go back. Also, for zxx_persistent-net-generator.rules, xx is any two digit number. So just go check the directory for a file that resembels *_persistent-net-generator.rules. Now to prevent udev to generate new interface for every new MAC address for Virtu